


The Old Black Train

by CrystalHavoc



Category: Infinity Train, Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Gen, OTGW x Infinity Train AU, some of the timelines don't fit up but idrc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28750857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrystalHavoc/pseuds/CrystalHavoc
Summary: "On-screen, the train rattles towards them. For a split second, Wirt stands there, transfixed and terrified, then his reflexes seem to kick in as he flings himself and Greg away from it, sending them both tumbling down the hill and into the icy river to meet their doom. As the song "Old Black Train" plays in the background, the person watching from afar chuckles softly. "Idiots," she murmurs under her breath, as the screen fades to black. "They were supposed to get on the train and work through their problems." She smiles at her own joke, before sitting back to continue the show. However, that little side quip to no one in particular was something that would not leave her mind. The seeds of an idea had been planted there that fateful night, and it would continue to take root and sprout and flourish in her brain, until finally, she found herself writing these very words." An AU where Wirt and Greg actually board the train that almost killed them in the show. Surprise - it's actually the Infinity Train! Featuring Wirt's deteriorating mental state, Greg being himself, younger Grace and Simon, Anna as an active character somewhere other than the comics, and Beatrice being the Sassqueen that we all know and love.
Relationships: and greg with his frog, beatrice and anna, but platonically we got wirt and greg, grace and simon (obvs), okay maybe some implied annatrice (and yes i did make that name up myself), wirt and anna, wirt and beatrice
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	1. The Cemetery

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is an idea I've had for a LONG time, and only now has it occured to me to actually publish it on a public site, for some reason. But I don't want to be one of those people that bombards you with miles of notes before you can get to the actual story, so without further ado, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Wirt sat down on the grassy verge and moaned.  
This was a disaster.  
He’d been actually hopeful, that morning when he finally finished recording The Tape. He’d wanted to end it on a high note, with one of his best pieces of poetry. It had seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world at that moment. His monument, his ultimatum, his masterpiece. Sure, Greg had somehow gotten hold of the tape and recorded that strange bear poem that Wirt wrote when he was - what? Five maybe? - not to mention that one improvisation poem with a very shaky ending, but those things had hardly seemed to matter. He’d somehow fooled himself into thinking it was a good idea to give a tape filled with poetry and clarinet music to Sara. Well, now he’d got his wish. She had it, and her and lousy old Jason Funderberker were going to listen to it, and laugh for hours, and then he would confess his feelings for her, and they’d start going out, and grow up to be a huge power couple, and he’d be their foot-stool for all eternity, and… and… and…  
He’d never live this down. His life was over.  
Croa-ak.  
He started as Greg hopped over the train tracks with a large and extremely bored-looking frog in his arms. “I found one! Look at him, brother-o-mine!” Greg patted the frog’s head. “We’ve got to name him for good luck!”  
“I don’t want to have anything to do with you, or that frog,” Wirt snapped.  
“Okay,” replied the younger boy, not listening, “I’ll just try to think of a name myself.”  
Wirt grumbled to himself as his brother began to wander in circles, loudly listing off a series of nonsensical names that may be suitable for a frog.  
“Dr Cucumber, Cauliflower James, Ol’ Cabbage Boy, Penguin Pete, Steve…”  
“How did I let myself get into this?” Wirt sighed, before beginning to recite poetry. It often helped him stay calm in moments of crisis, be it physical or psychological. “Though I am lost, my wounded heart resideth back home/ In pieces, strew’d about the graveyard of mine lost love/ For only the angel-voice that riseth from her lips doth make this heart dance/ As her--”  
He was cut off from his heartfelt lament by a distant sound. A whistling. A puffing. A deep, heavy sensation, like a great beast breathing. Distant, muffled, but definitely drawing nearer by the second.  
Oh no.  
He leapt to his feet and stared hopelessly across the train-tracks at the wall, weighing up his chances - maybe he could make a break across the tracks and scramble up the wall in the nick of time? But no, it would take too long to get Greg over, let alone that silly frog that Greg most likely now had an emotional attachment to. It would be far more difficult getting up the wall than leaping down it, especially as the convenient tree they’d used to get over the first time was less conveniently located on the other side, in the Eternal Garden cemetery.  
The train-tracks began to rattle. Sparks flew from the metal like flakes of hellfire. Oh, that’s good. I really should write that down, he found himself thinking. Wirt backed away, skidding and struggling to keep his balance on the wet grass of the verge.  
Suddenly, he noticed something that made his heart drop like a stone before the tide.  
Greg, still reciting names for his silly frog, had wandered directly into the middle of the tracks.  
Without thinking, Wirt screamed and dived forwards.

.......................................................................................................

It was as though it were all in slow motion.  
He caught hold of Greg’s wrist, Greg clung onto his frog with his free hand. Wirt threw himself backwards, pulling the three of them with him, and they collapsed on top of one another in the safety of the grass verge, seconds before the lights appeared around the corner like the eyes of a predator.  
The old black train rocketed past as Wirt picked himself up and tried to catch his breath. Wearily, he watched as the monster rattled on by, waiting for it to pass so they could find a way over the wall.  
And then it stopped. Right in front of them.  
A long black train, either end nowhere to be seen, right between them and the wall they currently needed to get back over.  
“I-it’s okay!” Wirt announced loudly. “We-we just need to wait for it to leave! Granted, it’s… a little weird that it stopped right here, the train station isn’t for another two miles… maybe they just need to restock on coal or something!”  
Wirt stared intently at the train, shifting from foot to foot every so often. Greg went back to naming his frog. The gentle wind echoed through the leaves. They waited. And the train stayed stubbornly still.  
Then, a strange thing happened - The doors in the train (there hadn’t, at first glance, seemed to be any doors) slid open right in front of them. It was too dark to see what the inside of the train car looked like, but there appeared to be a sort of greenish glow coming from within.  
“Let’s go!” cheered Greg, before moving as though to step through the door.  
Wirt grabbed his brother by the back of the collar. “No! Let’s NOT go! Don’t - don’t you even know the common symbolism of a mysterious train? There’s an old black train a-comin’/ Scraping ‘long the iron/ You don’t need no ticket, boys/ It’ll take you in its time? Does that not ring a bell for you?”  
Greg looked up at him blankly. The frog gave a loud croa-ak as if to agree.  
“Death, Greg! The train in this instance is symbolising death! And now one randomly happens to appear right in front of us and you want to get on!” He was walking in circles now, in a full-fledged rant. “I mean, why should I be surprised, really. You’re always getting us into trouble! Always running off and messing up!”  
“Who, me?” Greg asked innocently.  
“You and your stupid dad! Always interfering with my life, always trying to get me to, to join the Marching Band, or--”  
“Oh, yeah!” interrupted Greg. “If you join the Marching Band, you could hang out with Sara more!”  
Wirt wasn’t listening. “Do you even realise how we got stuck here? It’s because you were goofing around! It’s because you screwed up, like you always do! And now we’re trapped outside a graveyard, guarded by a train of death, and it’s all your... fault…”  
He trailed off when he realised that Greg wasn’t beside him anymore. The frog had wriggled free and Greg was chasing it in circles, calling things like “Kitty? Come back here! Where are you going?”  
Wirt gave a long, frustrated groan and slumped down onto the grass. “I guess”, he muttered, more to himself than anyone else, “there’s nothing to do but wait for it to leave.”  
And then, and then, and then.  
And then the frog leapt onto Wirt’s head, knocking off his makeshift elf hat, and dived directly onto the train.  
And then Greg scurried in after it.  
And then Wirt screamed and grabbed Greg’s ankle, trying to pull him out.  
And then Wirt’s flailing free hand, scrabbling for an anchor, landed directly on the train floor.  
And then the green light shot out of the train and engulfed them all, and everything went white.


	2. The Poppy Field Car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Greg continues to have the most brain cells of the group and Wirt's tendency to be an utter nervous wreck proceeds to not improve at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. Um. Did not expect that!  
> Seriously, I did not expect to already have THREE kudos left just overnight! I thought it would take a while to get even noticed but this...wow. Just wow.  
> Again, this is my first time publishing, is this a sad thing to be getting excited about? Should I have expected more? Is this normal? I really don't mind. I am going to be happy right now.  
> Anyway, enjoy this next chapter! (Also, I wouldn't get used to this frequent upload schedule as I'm just copy-pasting what I already have written, so once that runs out, it'll start taking a bit longer. Just a quick heads-up.)

Wirt’s eyes shot open. He was lying flat on his back, staring at a sky of soft pink.

Despite the seemingly soothing view, Wirt was anything but calm. Questions chased one another in circles like a scared flock of birds. Where? How? Who? What? Why?

He took a deep breath.  _ Calm yourself. Let’s take these one at a time. First of all, where am I? Well, I appear to be… _ He glanced around.  _...Lying down. Surrounded by, um, very long yellowish grass and very tall flowers. Most likely poppies. Okay. So I’m in some kind of poppy field or something of the sort. A poppy field with a pink sky. That’s a little weird.  _

He came close to panicking again, before forcing himself to calm down.  _ Alright, next question.  _ “ _ How did I get here” is a very good question, to be honest… well, what’s the last thing you remember? _

He thought. Fragments of memories flashed through his mind, faster than he could keep up with.

Halloween. Train. Tape. Sara. Train. Jacket. Graveyard. Train. Wall. Train-tracks. Frog. Train of death.

Train.

The last thing he remembered was getting on a train. An old black train with a strange green light inside. And then waking up here. Without explanation.

_ Okay, _ he thought, suppressing the once-again rising sense of panic inside him.  _ We can work with this. Next question - “Who?” Well, this seems to be all in order. I am Wirt. That’s settled right off the bat. As for “what” - we’ve already established. A train, and then a poppy field. Somehow. Um. I still don’t know… _

He trailed off, slightly embarrassed, as he realised he’d been talking out loud this whole time. But as there didn’t seem to be anyone else around, he decided he may as well keep going as he was. “And as for ‘why’... well, why did I get on the train anyway? Well, Greg was messing around, and…” He gasped. “Greg!”

“Yeah?” The wide-eyed face topped with an upside-down tea-kettle poked through the flowers.

Wirt let out a great sigh of relief. “Great. You’re okay. Now I’m… I’m going to figure out what’s going on, so you go play with your frog or something.”

Greg started. “Aw, beans! Where is that frog-o-mine?” His head disappeared back through the flowers, but Wirt could still hear his voice. “Hold on there a second, brother-o-mine - I’ll be back with Kitty soon!”

Wirt went back to his thoughts. Now that he’d assessed the situation, it was time to assess his own condition.

He seemed to be able to talk fluently. That much had been established.

Slowly, cautiously, he raised his head and circled his neck around. He could do this perfectly and without pain. So nothing there seemed to be broken. He then tried to wiggle his fingers, then flex his wrists, then raise his arms - all of which he could do fairly easily. Continuing this pattern of gentle movement all around his body, he assessed that nothing seemed to be broken. Good.

Wirt got gingerly to his feet. Now that he had his mind (partially) calmed and his body operational, it was time to act on his situation.

“Greg? Have you found your frog yet?”

Silence for a few seconds, then Greg came toddling through the poppies with the frog sat atop his kettle-hat. “Gottem!”

“Great.” Wirt took a deep breath, calmed himself with a colossal effort and announced, “Now let’s just figure out where…we…”

He trailed off as he noticed something that pretty much put a cherry on top of the Strangeness Sundae that life seemed intent on serving him.

A door.

A large red door with a sort of golden S-shaped handle.

In the middle of a poppy field with a soft-pink sky.

A door that led to nowhere.

  
  


Wirt stood there, trying to process this new information, before giving up completely and resorting to screaming out loud.

Nothing seemed to add up here.

He paced around in circles while Greg hopped onto a nearby rock and started humming, the frog still perched on his head.

So, they’d got on a weird train that had suddenly stopped for no apparent reason, and somehow they were now in a poppy field that Wirt didn’t recognise, and now there was a door? Nothing made sense at all.

He took a deep breath and started mumbling poetry to soothe his nerves. “As her goose-down touch doth feed my soul and cleanse mine own heart/ May I-- wait, didn’t I just say “heart” in the last line? AAAARGH! Not even poetry works here!” Wirt flung himself face-down into the poppies and groaned.

Greg turned his head and stared down at his brother. “Are… you okay down there?”

A muffled “uggggggh” sound was his answer.

“You lost your hat, by the way. I think Kitty here knocked it off when we got on the train.”

No response.

A concerned look crossed the younger boy’s face. He sat there thinking for a second, before coming to a realisation. “Wirt doesn’t know what to do!” he announced to his frog. “Well, he  _ is _ the leader…but I’m his second-in-command!” He stood up on the rock. “And I’m going to help him!”

Taking off his kettle-hat, sitting his frog inside and placing it carefully down on the rock, Greg hopped down off it and stood in thought.

“Well,” he began, “we’re not where we want to be. I think. I mean, it is a very nice field with nice flowers, but it may get a little boring. There doesn’t really seem to be anything else here, except -  _ aha! _ ” He’d spotted a big red door with a weird gold shape stuck to the front. “A way out! Well done, Greg!” he congratulated himself, before sauntering over to it.

It was a lot taller than he’d expected, and pushing it didn’t seem to make it budge. There didn’t seem to be anything to pull on at first, but on closer inspection he realised that the gold shape jutted out from the door enough to grip onto. Greg furrowed his brow, wrapped his fingers around it and pulled.

With a low grinding of gears, the shape began to turn. Grinning, Greg continued to push it around until it was too high to reach, before switching to the other side and pulling it down. When he’d got it round in a full half-turn, there was a low, satisfying  _ click  _ and the door swung open.

“Hey presto, I did it!” declared the boy, before hurrying away to get his frog and his brother.

  
  


To say that Wirt was not entirely pleased with the view that greeted him on the other side of the door would be an understatement. And a vast one at that.

Thinking back on it afterwards, he did rather think it would be a normal human reaction that - if one was in an already weird situation such as being in the middle of a poppy field with a pink sky and a large red door that let to nowhere standing in the middle, and no memory of how you got there except getting on a train with a green glowing light inside, and you were then faced with the fact that the large red door apparently DID lead somewhere,  _ and when you stepped through it, you saw for the first time that that somewhere was a rusted metal walkway between two cars of the most gigantic train you can imagine, surrounded by nothing but a desolate wasteland of orange sands, and a black sky smeared with red clouds shot through with gold on the horizon _ \- it would be normal to freak out at least a little.

But Wirt’s reaction (mostly consisting of stunned silence followed by quiet hysterical laughter and stumbling backwards in circles before Greg was able to guide him back into the poppy field and over to the rock so he could sit down) did seem to be a little over-the-top.

However, it didn’t take that long until they were both out of the door again and staring at the vast expanse that greeted them.

“What.. in the world is going on?” Wirt breathed, as the pair walked down the metal walkway.

“Well,” began Greg, taking the enquiry a little too literally, “you’re staring at the sky, and I’m answering your question, and--”

“No, no,” Wirt interjected, “I just mean…”

He broke off. They had reached the other end of the walkway, and there was another red door with the golden S-shaped insignia on the front.

“Um. How exactly did you get it open last time?”

“Oh!” Greg placed the kettle, which he was currently using to carry his frog, down and sauntered over the door, turning the shape to open it the same way he had before. Wirt stared at the mechanical wonder for a while, mesmerised. 

“Come on, brother-o-mine!” Greg announced. He was already halfway through the door by this point. “Let’s go!”

  
  


A few hours later, they burst out of the other side of that train car, slamming the door behind them, and stood there for a while, trying to get their breath back.

“Well. That’s the last time I trust a cult of undead pumpkin people,” Wirt announced heavily. “I think… I think for our sake we should both just take a pause and-- GREG!”

His brother was now halfway across the metal walkway. Wirt dashed across to keep up with him. “Greg, you need to stop wandering off!”

“Oh, I was just going to the next car, I thought I could get there--”

Wirt cut him off. “That’s exactly what I was about to say! Maybe we should just take a pause and assess our situation further. Try to figure out where we are!”

“I can do that!” Greg beamed. He then pressed a finger to his lips, looked slowly around through narrowed eyes and made a low “hmmm” sound. “Well,” he finally announced, “we’re on a very big train. Okay! Great, we’re done!” He began to run back towards the other end of the metal walkway.

Wirt sighed and let him go. “Just don’t open it without me, okay?” he called, and left it at that.

Sitting down on the walkway, he tried to process everything.  _ So we’re on the train. We got on the train behind the cemetery wall, and it seemed to be a normal-sized one then… And each individual car seems to be its own little sub-world. Also, um, this is definitely not the cemetery. Or anywhere on Earth, for that matter. So the most likely explanation seems to be that we are in some kind of pocket dimension parallel to our own, with no apparent way back. _

He then decided it would be better to stop leaving himself alone with his own thoughts, and ran after Greg, trying VERY hard not to think about his revelation.

They trekked on through car after car, with no further evidence of what was going on. Each car seemed unique, and there was no discernable way of determining the theme of the next one before one actually entered. Wirt tried to keep mental notes of his findings while Greg danced around trying to adopt cross-eyed talking ducks (don’t ask), before the former decided there wasn’t really enough to keep note of and abandoned the idea.

There was a car that was small and plain and box-shaped, where the door wouldn’t open until you kicked a small, brown and very disgruntled toad that sat in the middle of the floor (Greg refused to allow anyone to do so for at least half an hour, before Kitty the frog finally seemed to have had enough and promptly kicked himself, which seemed to work just as well). There was a car that seemed to be relatively normal, showcasing an ordinary-looking college campus, except the buildings were bare inside, there were no living beings to be found, and on closer inspection the hedges were not made of leaves but small tortoises.

Then, after what felt like forever, Greg announced that he was tired.

“Greg, we’re kind of busy right now.” Wirt didn’t even break stride.

“Busy doing what?”

“Well, we’re…” He trailed off. What  _ was _ the goal now? Just keep wandering along down the train? Through car after car? What was the end goal here? How were they going to leave? He couldn’t just keep hiding from it - he’d have to face facts eventually. Starting with the fact that they were living beings that needed methods of sustaining their energy, and right now they needed rest.

He took a deep breath. “Let’s… see if the next car has a spot to sleep.” They had reached the end of the metal walkway, and turned the shape to open the door.

Fortunately, the next car was another of what Wirt was subconsciously starting to refer to as a “landscape car”. Like the poppy field or the street with the turtle-bushes, it was a wide-open landscape (hence the name), and it took forever to find the door. This one was a dense jungle in hues of indigo and purple, and seemed to go on forever. The boys had barely walked fifty yards before they both collapsed into a downy bush and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, no one else was saying it so I had to - those things Amelia kept making in her train cars were TORTOISES. Hazel is a TORTOISE. Those tiny black creatures that Auntie Whispers ate and that turned Beatrice's dog into a monster are TORTOISES. Not turtles. Turtles are WATER CREATURES. There's a difference.  
> Also, YES I will include ALL THE CALLBACKS I WANT in this fic and you can't stop me! >;D  
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed the first actual full chapter of this story, and don't worry, I PROMISE we're going to meet Beatrice and Anna next time. Promise.  
> As always, please leave feedback and I'll see y'all next time!


	3. The Purple Jungle Car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ones you've all been waiting for finally make their debut.

Greg woke up.  
At first he wasn't sure if he was still asleep. He'd been having one of those dreams where you dream that you wake up. He couldn't quite remember what the dream was about, though he was pretty sure there had been a magical tiger involved.  
But after a quick glance around - at the inky-dark sky peppered with stars, at the blues and greens and purples of the forest around him, at the dark indigo bush he was currently nestled in, that glowed all the colours of the rainbow where he touched it, at the kettle containing Dr Cucumber the frog (he'd decided Kitty wasn't quite the right name) sitting at his feet, and at his snoozing, hatless brother, curled up in his navy cloak cloak nearby - Greg at last came to the conclusion that this time, he was actually awake.  
Sitting up and stretching, he wondered whether he should go back to sleep. It was certainly what Wirt would have wanted, since it was still dark, but he wasn’t sure if those rules applied on the train, as this was somewhere different. Finally, he decided that he may as well stay awake since he didn’t feel sleepy anymore, so he stood up and began to wander around, looking for something to do.  
Gazing at the strange glowing number on his hand, he wondered for the hundredth time how it had got there. He was pretty sure that he didn’t have it when he and Wirt climbed over the cemetery wall, but he couldn’t be certain. It wasn’t really as if he spent all his time staring at his own right hand, examining it. He amused himself for a while with the image of someone going around holding their hand in front of their face - that really would be silly.  
He lifted his left index finger and traced the green digits etched onto his palm.  
6...3...  
Sixty three.  
The boy wondered if Wirt had a number too. It might help things make a bit more sense if Greg could see what it was, but on the other hand (haha, pun!) Wirt tended to keep his arms under his cloak, making it a bit hard to see whether or not he also had the weird number on him.  
Unless… Wirt was asleep.  
Which he currently was.  
Greg turned and scurried back to the bush which his brother was sleeping under, gently grasped a corner of Wirt’s cloak, lifted it away to reveal Wirt’s right hand, palm facing down, resting on the grass--  
Hang on.  
What was that?  
Greg turned, dropping the cloak corner and straining his hearing. Yes - there it was again. There was no mistaking it now; footsteps and voices. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but they seemed to be getting closer.

..............................................................................................................................

Meanwhile, a few minutes earlier...

.......................................................................................................................

To say that Anna had been having a bad day would be a bit of an understatement.  
First of all, she’d had the misfortune of running into that stupid Mirror Car again, and after she’d finally gone through the ordeal of persuading her reflection to switch and open the door and had escaped to the next car, she’d realised that a certain someone wasn’t with her and had to go right back to the Mirror Car to get her, only to find that she wasn’t there anymore, and by the time Anna had clocked and had managed to escape the car yet again, her companion had assumed Anna had gone on without her and was already two cars ahead. On top of that, her number was playing up again. This wouldn’t normally be a problem - after all, it was pretty much in limbo more than it was static - but a recent discovery she had made was that the longer the number took to change, the longer the gentle vibrating sensation went on and the stronger it got, and right now it was actually very uncomfortable. And finally, not too many cars ago, she had had the misfortune to run right slap-bang into that, that - what did they call themselves again?  
The Cult of the Conductor.  
The gang, the mob, that believed the impostor that currently dominated the train was the true conductor, and that the train was their own personal playground to trash and vandalise to their heart’s content. Killing Denizens, decimating train cars and terrorising other passengers left, right and centre, Anna had run into them far more frequently than she would have liked in the past year or two. (It is, admittedly, hard to keep track of time when you’re on the train, especially someone who had been there as long as she had.)  
She despised them.  
And right now, she was on their tail.  
Kicking aside a dark purple tumbleweed, she walked steadily on through the jungle. It was a bit of a pity - it was a very beautiful car, and would be quite a nice place to rest for a little while, but she couldn’t stop now. The Cult could only be a few cars ahead. She needed to keep moving.

..............................................................................................

Greg decided to try climbing a tree to see if he could hear them better. He found a nice tall one with big branches and knots sticking out of it that would make it easy to climb, balanced the kettle (still with a sleeping Dr Cucumber in it, mind you) right-way-up on his head, and scrambled up.  
Peering through the branches, he finally caught sight of a girl, maybe a couple of years older than Wirt, walking through the jungle. She seemed to be scribbling something in a big red book.  
“Anna, wait up!”  
Another girl, puffing and red-faced, crashed through a tangle of closely-knit navy and lilac vines, trying to hitch up her skirt so as not to trip, accidentally stepping on multiple glowing lizards in the process thus causing them to start chirping like crickets, and finally catching up to the girl called Anna. “Slow down - I almost got taken out by that stupid gorilla back there.”  
Gorilla? thought Greg. Like in that schoolhouse car?  
“We can’t risk losing them,” Anna replied. “And I would have thought you could get through here pretty easily.”  
This strange comment seemed to annoy the other girl quite a bit. “Big car. Probably full of passengers. No way am I doing that here.”  
“At any rate,” Anna went on, closing the book and stuffing it into a satchel, “we need to keep on moving. They could be leaving any second.”  
Greg found himself wondering if they were talking in a secret code or something, because he couldn’t really understand anything they were saying. However, he was soon distracted by Dr Cucumber choosing that moment to wake up and let out an almighty CRO-OAKKK.  
Greg froze.  
Luckily, the various sounds of the forest - the chirping of the lizards, the rustling of the leaves, and so on - seemed to be enough to distract from the sound. If it had happened in the middle of complete silence, it would have likely drawn more attention to itself. At any rate the girls continued talking and didn’t seem to notice.  
“Okay, here’s an idea - how about we NOT go directly towards the terrifying anti-Denizen cult?” A tinge of fear was creeping into the voice of the girl whose name Greg didn’t know.  
Anna gave a sigh. “Look, Beatrice, I know who they are. I know what they can do, probably better than anyone. And believe me, if we had a choice, I’d be keeping as far away from them as possible. But they’ve been terrorising this train for far too long.”  
They were walking just out of Greg’s sight at this point. He closed his eyes and listened as hard as he could.  
“I know,” he heard the girl called Beatrice say. “I just… If they find out-”  
Silence. Beatrice had cut herself off. Or maybe Anna put her hand over Beatrice's mouth. Or something. Greg was quite sure she hadn’t meant to finish her sentence that way, it had seemed quite sudden.  
After a little while of silence, maybe, five, ten seconds, he heard Anna say, so softly Greg could barely hear her. “They won’t find out.”  
About half of a second later, Greg noticed that Dr Cucumber’s kettle was slipping on his head. Instinctively, he let go of the branch he was holding for support and tried to hold it steady. Not only did this not work, since Dr Cucumber was hopping around and croaking at the top of his lungs at this point (Greg decided that he probably didn’t like small spaces) and making it increasingly more difficult to keep it upright, letting go of the tree caused Greg to overbalance, sending both him and his frog tumbling to the ground, landing with a THUD right in front of the girls.  
And this, they most certainly did notice.


	4. The Purple Jungle Car II

When a small boy, a frog, and a large kettle fall out of a tree, what exactly is the appropriate reaction? The answer is not only incredibly hard to come by, it is quite pointless, as this is obviously a very rare (and, therefore, unexpected) situation. Please bear this in mind when reading the following.

Beatrice let out a strangled yell (more of shock than anger) and lashed out at the nearest thing (which, fortunately, happened to be the kettle). She kicked it full force, sending it soaring, turning over itself, in a dizzily graceful arc that stretched far off into the forest. Just after it left their sight, a dull thud and a distant “ow” indicated that Wirt was now awake.

She winced. “Sorry.”

Anna gave a short chuckle, but somehow still didn’t smile. “I suppose you were right. Passengers everywhere.”

Sitting up, Greg stared at them for a few seconds, before leaping to his feet, sweeping Dr. Cucumber behind him and brandishing one of the glowy gecko things like a sword. “You’ll never take me alive!” he announced, before promptly fleeing into the jungle in the opposite direction.

.................................................................................................................................................

“So you actually saw other people on this train? Other flesh-and-blood human beings? Are you sure?”

Greg looked up at his brother. “Yeah. Pretty sure. I mean, they might just be aliens or something that just look a lot like humans, but-”

“And you ran off?” burst out Wirt. “You just ran off and left?”

“Sorry, I panicked,” mumbled Greg, in the most un-panicked voice known to humankind.

“Greg! We could have asked them where they were going! They might have known something about the train! Just - AARGH!” Wirt threw his arms into the air in exasperation. “Which way did they go?”

Greg pointed in the direction he’d run from. Without missing a beat, Wirt scooped up his brother and the frog and was running in the same direction.

He crashed through the thickets, tripping over tree roots that wormed through and above the ground like, um, worms.  _ Darn, poetry really doesn’t work here _ , Wirt thought as he ran.

Before long, the pair had reached the clearing where Greg first spied the two girls, and the tree that he’d subsequently fallen out of. But there was no sign of anyone.

“Great,” sighed Wirt. “We lost them!”

He sank down into a pile of cobalt leaves and twigs, and lay there, trying to figure out what to do. He had been so  _ close _ to something that made  _ sense. _ And just as he saw a glimmer of a hint of someone that could know a way out, his only lead slipped right through his fingers.

Brilliant.

Wirt wondered, with little real interest in actually finding an answer, what to do next. And once again, up came the question of an end goal. Was he, after all, fated to be but a boat upon a winding river, twisting and turning towards the endless sea? Further and further away from where he wanted to be -  _ who  _ he wanted to be? Should he just admit defeat after a-

“Look!” cried Greg, jerking Wirt out of his soliloquy. “The shiny lizard things!”

Wirt sat up, and lo and behold, there it was - leading from where they were was a trail of extremely trodden-on-looking glowing geckos that were chirping their hearts out, littered about a path of cracked twigs, broken vines and flattened grass, that in general looked like a rhinoceros had just rampaged through the jungle. Wirt found himself wondering how he had failed to spot it in the first place.

“I think they went that way!” Greg exclaimed with delight, before scurrying off to follow the trail of destruction, the kettle containing his frog tucked safely under his arm.

Wirt shook his head and hurried after them.

.............................................................................................................

Beatrice had found her new least favourite car.

At first, she thought that the general aesthetic of the blue jungle was pretty interesting, and those lizards that made cricket noises were entertaining, at least. Now, they were really getting on her nerves, she was hot and out of breath from running to keep up with Anna, and what with the endless tangle of branches, vines, leaves and the odd fallen tree, it almost seemed like this car had been tailor-made to inconvenience her as much as physically possible.

But, finally, after what seemed like a million years of running, slaloming between the trees and leaping over streams and small rivers, before tripping and falling flat on her face, getting up with a scowl and having to put on an extra spurt of speed to catch up with her friend, and rinse and repeat -  _ finally _ , the long-awaited sight of the red-and-gold door appeared before her.

“Finally.” She staggered over to the door and leaned against it to catch her breath.

Anna tapped her arm, gently but impatiently. “We really need to keep moving.”

“Just give me a second.”

Sighing, Anna wandered over to inspect a nearby shrub, and that’s when she heard something.

A far-off voice, so faint that for a second she could have sworn she’d imagined it. But then a moment passed and it seemed more amplified. Clearer, so that she could almost tell what it was saying. She glanced over at her friend. “Beatrice, can you hear that?”

Her friend, still exhausted from running, looked at her with half-closed eyes. But then the voice sounded again, still relatively faint, but undeniably there, and Beatrice’s face crumpled into a confused frown. “Yeah, I hear it.”

They continued to listen to whatever it was, trying to recognise the words. And it continued to grow gradually louder, and clearer, almost as if whatever it was was getting close--

Beatrice turned to look at the source of the sound just as Wirt came sprawling down the hill, skidding and trying to stop, and crashing into Beatrice full-force, slamming them both into the door.

Wirt picked himself up, apologising over and over again, gibbering slightly. Anna, who had been watching this little spectacle unfold, helped her friend up, before turning to this strange, scarecrow-like passenger. “It’s alright.”

“Speak for yourself,” Beatrice muttered, nursing a bruise on her left arm. “Could I have an explanation real quick, if you don’t mind?”

“Ah,” started the boy. “Um, my - my name is Wirt, and this,” (he gestured to the empty space next to him) “is--” He cut himself off with a gasp. “Greg!”

Spinning round to locate his brother, while the girls looked on in silence, Wirt began to scramble back up the hill, which appeared to be harder than it looked. After a few seconds of awkward silence as he tried to sprint up the base of the hill, only trip and slide straight back down, Beatrice attempted to break the silence. “So, Wirt, huh?”

“Yes,” he grunted in affirmation, seemingly trying to sink his fingers into the ground and grab fistfuls of powdery-blue grass for a better grip.

“Not a name you usually hear, right?”

Wirt paused so that he could crane his neck around to look at her. “What? I… I don’t know! I guess, but-” He gave up. “That’s not really the point.” This seemed to be his attempt to end the conversation, as he went straight back to scrabbling around, making about half a metre’s progress.

“Okay,” Beatrice continued stubbornly. “Well, this is Anna.” She pointed at her friend, who nodded and made a “Mm” sound, to confirm.

“And I,” went on Beatrice, with more emphasis, “am Beatrice.”

“That’s nice.”

“So are you going to introduce us to the kid clinging to your back or not?”

Wirt somehow stopped sliding, and slowly brought a hand up to feel behind him, until he felt something. Something large and warm and giggly.

He jumped, stumbling and almost losing his grip. “Greg!”

The small child currently latched onto his back broke out into fits of laughter. “I got you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. Um. This has been a bit of a wait, amirite?  
> Seriously, I am really sorry it took this long. I was going through a phase of extremely low motivation, but I'm back now and have finally written enough to pass as a full-length chapter!  
> Something that y'all should know: I am not giving up on this story. It doesn't matter if it's been days, or weeks, or months, or even years since the last chapter: I'm not going to give up this story. That is my promise to you.  
> As always, leave feedback and stay tuned!

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave feedback, and stay tuned! Next chapter will be up soon!


End file.
